Manager Jerry Manuel said he was not sure why the team played so poorly on the road but speculated that it might be because they get excited by smaller ballparks away from Citi Field and try to hit home runs.

This squares with my long-held belief that the Mets are a team perennially afflicted with what might be called "wannabe-a-hero" syndrome. This could also explain their frustrating inability to get hits in "clutch" situations.

Sean Forman looked further into the question of home field advantage in general in his "Bats" post later that same day. A statistical study, Forman writes, has shown that having the last at-bat is not what gives the home team the edge. Instead, it's familiarity with the idiosyncracies of the "friendly confines". This advantage is enhanced when a team's home field is in its second through fifth year of use. When a team first uses a new field, the players must learn its peculiarities just as those on visiting teams must, so the advantage is reduced. After the fifth year, visitors have come to learn the territory, which again reduces, though it doesn't negate, the home team's upper hand. Since Citi Field is now in its second year, this could at least partially explain the Mets' superb record at home, but not why they're so dismal away.

6.6 update: The at-home magic is back as the Mets complete a sweep of division rivals the Marlins.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Students and faculty of the University of Washington's Information School do a send-up of the pop star. Thanks to Athenasbanquet for the clip, and my wife for spotting it on the archives listserv and forwarding it to me.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are a Brooklyn based rhythm and blues group that performs original songs in a style that evokes soul classics of the late 1960s and early '70s, but nevertheless sounds fresh. The clip above, "100 Days, 100 Nights" (courtesy of Daptone Records, the group's private label) is the title song from their album released on October 2, 2007. Their first album, Dap-Dappin' with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, was released in May of 2002. You can hear the title song of their latest album, I Learned the Hard Way, released in April, on their website.

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About Me

I narrowly missed being that rara avis for my generation, a native Floridian, when the U.S. Army closed its hospital in Tallahassee, shortly before my mother’s due date. She went home, and I was born in a city renowned in Vaudeville humor: Altoona, Pennsylvania. In that chilly March of 1946, the first sound to reach my infant ears from outside the hospital walls was likely the shriek of a steam locomotive’s whistle. This could explain my lifelong love of trains. Four surface crossings of the Atlantic in childhood also led to fascination with ships and the sea.

My father was in the military, so our family (I was an only child) went from place to place often in my early years. I was in England from the ages of five to eight (the first newspaper headline I recall reading is “KING DIES”; the King in question being George VI, father of Elizabeth II) and began my formal education in a rural county council (what we call “public”) school, where I probably escaped having my bottom caned only because the headmistress feared creating an international incident. Other places where I lived while growing up were Miami, San Antonio, Cheyenne, the Florida panhandle and Tampa.

I graduated from the University of South Florida (B.A., 1967) and Harvard Law School (J.D., 1970). After that, apart from two years' duty in the U.S. Army, I practiced law in New York City. I worked in law firms and as in-house counsel, and served on the boards of directors of an insurer and a reinsurer. On a volunteer basis I now write for Brooklyn Heights Blog and the Brooklyn Bugle, and also publish my own blog, Self-Absorbed Boomer, which has been described as "relentlessly eclectic." In 1991, I married Martha Foley, an historian and archivist. We live in Brooklyn Heights. Our daughter, Elizabeth Cordelia Scales, also lives in Brooklyn.